NEW YORK, 1 March 2018 – Nearly 19 million babies born globally every year – 14 per cent – are at risk of permanent yet preventable brain damage and reduced cognitive function due to a lack of iodine in the earliest years of life, according to a new joint report by UNICEF and GAIN released today. More than 1 in 4 of these children – 4.3 million – lives in South Asia.

There is no day that goes past without the impact of an improvised explosive device (IED) making headlines around the world. Of all explosive weapons used, the IED is the most widespread, the most harmful and the most pernicious. Based on the belief that to overcome a problem, we must first understand it, this monitor is a small step in seeking to address the terrible realities of today.
It is a monitor that is, also, a response to a call to action.

On Monday 16 October 2017 the Council adopted the EU Annual Report on Human Rights And Democracy in the World in 2016.

2016 was a challenging year for human rights and democracy, with a shrinking space for civil society and complex humanitarian and political crises emerging. In this context, the European Union showed leadership and remained strongly committed to promote and protect human rights and democracy across the world.

During the first semester of 2017, EM-DAT preliminary data shows that 149 disasters occurred in 73 countries. The impact of which resulted in 3,162 deaths, affected more than 80 million people and caused more than US$32.4 billion (A).

The major disasters were floods and landslides occurring in Asia, South America and Africa (B).

Young migrants and refugees set out to escape harm or secure better futures – and face staggering risks in the process. For 17-year old Mohammad, who traveled through Libya to seek asylum in Italy, violence and persecution back home meant the choice was clear: “We risked our lives to come here,” he says, “we crossed a sea. We knew it is not safe, so we sacrificed. We do it, or we die.”

Conflict, violence and disasters have caused more than 9 million new internal displacements globally in the first half of 2017, according to new estimates released today by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).

Of the 9.1 million new internal displacements, 4.6 million were caused by conflict, a figure which is already two-thirds of last year’s total. The countries with the highest new internal displacement by conflict are:

Affected areas Raqqa governorate Cause of displacement Conflict Figures As many as 14,000 new conflict displacements between 5 and 22 June; as many as 443,000 returns between January and 30 June; about 31,000 cross border returns from Turkey, Lebanon,
Iraq, Jordan and Egypt between January and May

The quest of the last 15 years to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) taught us that Global Goals can motivate and help sustain leaps in human progress. It also taught us that the specifics matter. In some places, the MDGs became a widely-recognized, consistent and important driver of local progress; in others, the role and impact of the MDGs was more ambiguous. A lot depended on way the MDGs were implemented: if local change agents made them meaningful locally; if local leaders drew on their legitimacy and visibility; if they were employed to solve real-life problems etc.